Chapter 24 · After the Death Time

"You're bleeding again."

Mara's voice cuts through the ringing in my ears. I'm sitting on the edge of a cracked subway bench, the ledger open across my knees, and yeah, my nose is dripping red onto the pages. The numbers don't care. They keep scrolling.

"I know," I say.

"That's not a small bleed, Jace. That's a your-brain-is-cooking bleed."

"Still know."

She crouches in front of me, one hand on my knee, the other holding her gun low and ready. We're three stops past Central, in a maintenance tunnel that smells like rust and piss. The train that almost flattened us is long gone. So is Ephraim's data core, the one that showed my death time.

The one that said I was still alive when they tagged me dead.

"Look at me," Mara says.

I do. Her face is smudged with dust, hair half out of its tie, eyes sharp and too close. Her palm is warm through my jeans. I can feel her pulse in her fingertips.

"We have two plays," she says. "One: we chase whoever sold you and find out why the city thinks you died early.